Conversion 101: How to Create an SEM Legend Exercise

Don’s Contracting is in steady demand. The local market is tight, supply is low and demand is high. Don will tell you he makes his living off of word of mouth. He doesn’t worry much about online experience. He has a personal edge over many other contractors, because of how he makes his customers feel and the quality of his work.

Don doesn’t think about the experience of the people referred to him. He knows this level of demand may not continue forever so he has to to make hay while the sun shines. Today his potential customers happily take the personal recommendation. Yet, they will likely start their journey to hiring him online. Let’s think about the buyer legend from Samantha’s point of view.

Don is a talented remodeler and contractor. He has been working with the Keller family (all names have been changed to protect the innocent) for the past year on remodeling several parts of their home. They love Don and recommend him to friends all the time.

Samantha was referred to Don by the Keller family. Samantha has never done any significant remodeling in her home. She is looking to remodel her kitchen. She has tried speaking with a couple of contractors already. Those experiences left her with even more questions, and less confidence, than when she first started out. She is so grateful that the Keller’s told her about Don.

The first thing she does is Google his name and/or his business name.

What would happen if she could not find anything under his name? What do you think might happen if she found all kinds of negative reviews for Don? She might start a broader search for “kitchen remodelers in Austin” to see who and what show up?

To build a buyer legend for search you must perform a pre-mortem. We begin by having your team imagine that the customer has completed her (or his) buying journey and either didn’t buy at all, didn’t buy what you sell (in favor of an alternative solution), or bought from a competitor.

Now ask yourselves:

What went wrong that led to these outcomes? Think of Murphy’s law. Now think up fixes, resolutions, and workarounds for each failure point.

We can assume from what we know of Don that if people hire him, they will love him and tell others and that will drive people to go back online and search for him after the recommendation and continue this positive circle of business. The part that is not clear is:

What questions do you think Samantha might have before she even calls or completes an online form for a contractor to come to her house? Might she not call if she does not get some critical ones answered? It’s possible.

For this post let’s focus on just one part. In the comments below, list all the possible questions Samantha might want answered from the website if she landed on it before she contacts Don.

In our follow up post we will tell you exactly what we put together for Don based on our research. We will also share some of the screen shots of competitors so we can evaluate how well they did at helping the customers through the experience and building confidence.

Bryan Eisenberg is coauthor of the Wall Street Journal, Amazon, BusinessWeek, and New York Times bestselling books "Call to Action," "Waiting For Your Cat to Bark?," and "Always Be Testing." Bryan is a professional marketing keynote speaker and has keynoted conferences globally such as SES, Shop.org, Direct Marketing Association, MarketingSherpa, Econsultancy, Webcom, SEM Konferansen Norway, the Canadian Marketing Association, and others. In 2010, Bryan was named a winner of the Direct Marketing Educational Foundation's Rising Stars Awards, which recognizes the most talented professionals 40 years of age or younger in the field of direct/interactive marketing. He is also cofounder and chairman emeritus of the Web Analytics Association. Bryan serves as an advisory board member of SES Conference & Expo, the eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summit, and several venture capital backed companies. He works with his coauthor and brother Jeffrey Eisenberg. You can find them at BryanEisenberg.com.

4 comments

Why should I trust you?
Wha makes you so good at what you do?
What reviews/testimonials can you provide?
Who has used your services?
Do you have pictures of past projects?
What do you look like?
What services do you have to offer?
How much do your services cost?
Are you insured?
What payment options do you offer?
Do you offer financing?
Do you do the work or do you subcontract the work?
Do you work by yourself or with a group of people? / how many people will be working on my project?
How are you going to take care of my house?
How do I know my belongings are safe?
What does the process look like from beginning to end?
How do I contact you?
How do we stay in contact throughout the project?
How will I provide you access to my house?
What happens if the project experiences scope creep, how do we handle that?
What are my options if we begin to experience overages in scheduling and cost?
Who provides the material? You or me?
If you provide the material, how good is the grade (do use cheap products)?
I don’t know contractor lingo, can you speak to me in layman’s terms?
How long will the project take?
Will I have to vacate the room and/or my house for you to work?
How will I be updated on the progress?
I have a pet, will that be a problem?
Who cleans up after completion?
If you accidentally damage other parts of my house, who is responsible and how will be handled?
Are you easy to get a hold of?

I would think some preliminary questions might be something like, “What are some examples of previous jobs you’ve done similar to mine?”, “Is my job too small for you?”, “Will you be working on my remodel personally, or will you be sending a crew?”, “Where are you located?”, among others.

* Is the work warrantied? If so, for how long?
* Will my house be dusty? Do you have a way of keeping the construction dust out of the rest of the house?
* Show me LOTS of before & after pictures of your remodels

Bryan Eisenberg

Jeffrey Eisenberg

We have been posting a significant amount of content on LinkedIn and want to be sure we are connected there. What are your big goals for 2019? We would love to chat with you about them. The post The Little Steps it Will Take to Succeed in 2019 and Beyond! appeared first on Buyer Legends.

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